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RUSSIAN foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has called on the United Kingdom to comply with its own commitments on international law instead of asking Russia to respond to allegations that it was involved in the poisoning of a former spy. British Prime Minister Theresa May earlier demanded Russia to provide an explanation over the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter in British soil. “We have heard the ultimatum from London. I can only add that Great Britain, as well as Russia, are part of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and the Prime Minister and the Secretary for Foreign Affairs are well aware of this,” Lavrov said. He noted that under the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in cases of suspected use of a banned toxic substance, the country affected should immediately address the country suspected to have produced that particular poisonous substance. Lavrov said Russia sent an official note seeking access to the substance so … [Read more...] about Russia ignores UK poisoning ultimatum

LONDON – Four UK-registered companies are at the heart of a scheme that funnelled $2.9 billion out of Azerbaijan’s state purse, according to a report by Transparency International and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Their investigation alleges that billions of dollars were channelled through four British companies – two Scottish Limited Partnerships (SLPs) and two Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) – controlled via offshore jurisdictions, between 2012 and 2014. Information about the scheme was leaked to Danish newspaper Berlingske, and shared with the OCCRP. According to the investigation, the money was used by Azerbaijan’s ruling elite to buy favour with European politicians, purchase luxury goods, and pay British private school fees. However, there is no suggestion that recipients knew the source of the money. The scheme has been named the “Azerbaijani Laundromat” by the OCCRP, because vast … [Read more...] about ‘No one suspects Scotland’: UK shell companies allegedly funneled $2.9 billion out of Azerbaijan

Theresa May ramps up her war of words with Russia as she labels it a “hostile state.” The prime minister claims Russia is attempting to tear Europe apart. May insists UK remains committed to European security despite leaving the EU. May has accused Russia of attempting to “sow discord” in the west while launching a “fake news” war. LONDON – Theresa May will today warn that Russia is attempting to tear Europe apart as she labels the country a “hostile state” The Prime Minister will tell the Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels that European countries must be “open-eyed” to the threat from Russia. “From agriculture in Ukraine to the tech sector in Belarus – there is a huge amount of potential in the Eastern neighbourhood that we should nurture and develop,” she will say. “But we must also be open-eyed to the … [Read more...] about Theresa May warns that ‘hostile’ Russia will tear Europe apart

The UK Ministry of Defense announced on Tuesday that it would sell the HMS Illustrious for scrap to a Turkish company called LEYAL Ship Recycling Ltd. for about $2.5 million, after trying and failing to repurpose the ship as a museum. “We have done all we can for over two years to find a home for the former HMS Illustrious in the UK, and regrettably all options have now been exhausted,” UK Minister for Defence Procurement Harriett Baldwin said in a statement. Unfortunately, the sale of the Illustrious coincides with an overall decline in Britain’s naval and military power at large. In an essay written at Reuters, David Axe details a decades-long decline in money and attention spent on maintaining the Royal Navy. Indeed the Royal Navy, once the greatest in the world, has declined precipitously and no longer even employs fighter jets. The entire fleet stands at just 89 ships and one helicopter carrier, after the Illustrious was decommissioned in … [Read more...] about The UK is selling an old aircraft carrier for scrap as its navy declines

The chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign was involved in encouraging Crimean independence from Ukraine, the Times of London reported Wednesday, citing a leaked memo. The Times of London reported on a memo that was said to reveal Paul Manafort’s involvement in the campaign to win support for the eventual annexation of the Crimean peninsula, which happened in 2014. According to the UK newspaper, a Ukrainian prosecutor is investigating Manafort for “conspiring with a criminal organization” and “inciting ethnic hatred and separatism.” In the international community, the annexation of Crimea is widely considered to be an illegal move by Russia. In 2006, Manafort was behind demonstrations in Crimea against NATO, the Times reported. Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian Party of Regions led the protests. Russia is known to stand against NATO, an alliance it is not a member of. The memo from the prosecutor said: “It was his political … [Read more...] about Ukrainian prosecutor alleges Trump campaign chair encouraged Russia’s annexation of Crimea

Few words issued by President-elect Donald Trump could matter more than his recent rhetoric on nuclear weapons. “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” Trump posted to Twitter on December 22, 2016. The next day, he bucked his aides’ dismissive spin: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all,” Trump allegedly told MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski over the phone. Trump is worried about the nuclear weapons modernization efforts of Russia, which in 2014 violated a key arms reduction treaty, plus the emerging threat of North Korea. His tough-guy attitude echoes Cold War-era logic: outmatch your adversaries, or risk a nation-destroying preemptive strike. But this line of thinking is exceedingly dangerous in a future US president. It not only ignores disquieting facts … [Read more...] about Trump’s call for a nuclear ‘arms race’ is the most dangerous thing he’s said yet

Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters became aware of suspicious “interactions” between associates of Donald Trump and suspected or known Russian operatives in late 2015, The Guardian reported on Thursday. The Guardian’s report – which said other intelligence agencies in Germany, Estonia, and Poland also picked up communications between Trump’s associates and Russian agents – is consistent with earlier revelations about what spurred the US intelligence community to launch its investigation last summer into Trump’s ties to Russia. The European agencies shared the intelligence with their American counterparts between late 2015 and mid-2016, The Guardian reported. But the FBI and the CIA “were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump’s team and Moscow ahead of the US election,” the report said. “It looks like the [US] agencies were asleep,” a UK intelligence … [Read more...] about ‘There’s something not right here’: British spies warned the US about ‘extensive’ contact between Trump team and Russia

From the northern tip of the Baltics to the southern edge of the Balkans, Russia is stepping up spying on its neighbors, according to numerous reports from the region. The most recent notice of such activity comes from Estonia, whose intelligence service’s annual report says the “Baltic Sea area is especially vulnerable to threats from Russia.” According to Estonia’s national intelligence service, Russia, acting through its military intelligence agency, the GRU, and its Federal Security Service, or FSB, has taken a special interest in the foreign and security policies, defense planning, armed forces, arms development, and military capabilities of its neighbors. “The Russian special services are interested in both the collection of information and in influencing decisions important for Estonia,” the report states. “The Russian intelligence and security services conduct anti-Estonian influence operations, including … [Read more...] about A new report says Russia is intensifying its spy game in Eastern Europe

President Donald Trump and several associates continue to draw intense scrutiny for their ties to the Russian government. A dossier of unverified claims alleges serious conspiracy and misconduct in the final months of the 2016 presidential campaign. The White House has dismissed the dossier as fiction, and most of the claims remain unverified. The timeline of major events, however, lines up. The document includes one particularly explosive allegation – that the Trump campaign agreed to minimize US opposition to Russia’s incursions into Ukraine in exchange for the Kremlin releasing negative information about Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. The timing of events supporting this allegation also lines up. The timeline of claims made in an unsubstantiated dossier presented by top US intelligence officials to President Donald Trump and senior lawmakers last … [Read more...] about The timeline of Trump’s ties with Russia lines up with allegations of conspiracy and misconduct

Russia’s embassy in the United Kingdom is trolling Turkey on Twitter. Its photos posted recently include alleged ISIS oil-smuggling routes in the country, images linking Turkey’s president to the militants, and a cartoon of an octopus grabbing fistfuls of cash. Since Turkey shot down a Russian jet last month, relations between the two countries has been in a state of near free fall. And on Wednesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense presented the most potentially damning charge against Ankara – that Turkey, under the lead of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family, was participating in and facilitating the ISIS oil trade. Russia posits that ISIS moves its oil into Turkey through three border crossings: two in Syria, and one in Iraq. However, experts have called the evidence into question, as all three regions are controlled by Kurdish groups who are currently battling against ISIS militants. Relations between the various Kurdish … [Read more...] about Russia’s UK embassy is trolling Turkey on Twitter over the country’s alleged connections to ISIS